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Getting a kick out of iPhone Tracker maps

Warner Crocker's iPhone recorded his trips to Maine and Chicago -- but he doesn't mind.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

iPhone Tracker application produces a map of where you've been since last June

The app exposes a "secret" file that contains info about iPhone locations

Some people are having fun exploring these maps and even posting them online

But the dominant thinking is that Apple has allowed a major privacy breach

(CNN) -- Some people are treating this iPhone tracking fiasco kind of like a snow day: It's annoying that it happened, but, you know, might as well have some fun with it.

Here's the background: Two researchers on Wednesday said they found a file on the iPhone and the 3G-connected iPad 3G that stores a list of users' locations. Apple hasn't commented on this development.

The researchers created a program, called iPhone Tracker, that lets iPhone and iPad owners map out their every move since June, when this update occurred.

"I find myself fascinated staring at this automatically generated record of where I've been. There's my life, surreptitiously recorded by my iPhone. I particularly love the little series of dots out in West Virginia, which were recorded while I was flying around with James Fallows, and those dots near the Milwaukee Airport, where I made peace with Chili's."

He says Apple "should explain itself and/or just stop this data collection," but, in the meantime, "we might as well make the best of this weird privacy snafu."

"I was left slightly creeped out, but also in awe of what I was seeing," she writes. "It was almost fun to take a trip through time -- the app can show a time-lapse of the data -- and memory. I was confused by some of the spots on the map, but then remembered that I had connecting flights go through those cities. Other spots had no explanation, but that could be due to the fact that cell-tower triangulation may have been used to record the data and led to a few inaccuracies."

He would have opted-in for this sort of tracking feature even if Apple had told him about the "secret" file, he said by phone.

"I looked at it and I was like, well, yeah, that's what I did last year!" he said.

"I wrote about most of that stuff online already," he added. "There's no secret I went to Memphis or Chicago or Maine."

Even though he's fine living in public, Crocker still said Apple should have notified people that this info was being stored -- unencrypted -- on their phones and computers.

"You do need to give consumers the option to opt out," he said. "I just think that's the only fair thing to do. Me, I would have said sure go ahead follow me around, I don't care; but the person across from me at the dinner table tonight might feel just the opposite."